the summer of broken hands
by zihna
Summary: In which Shane comes back.  Post 2x10 fic, with some added backstory. Very strong T.


Notes: Set post-2x10 "18 Miles Out." General spoilers up through that and some minor speculation for the next episode.

This is entirely because Rick and Shane are idiots but I love them, and this probably isn't the way the show is going to go, but whatever, I wish it would go this way.

Summary: In which Shane comes back.

Warnings for language, violence, mentions of child abuse, patricide, and de-eyeing zombies.

Disclaimer: _No esta mio, amigos_.

* * *

><p>the summer of broken hands<p>

* * *

><p>The first time they fought, they were eleven and stupid and too damn skinny to do much damage, but Rick broke Shane's nose and Shane split Rick's lip anyway.<p>

They sat in the principal's office for three hours with ice packs pressed to their faces because Rick's dad was in Atlanta with his mom and Shane's dad couldn't be fucked to come, and somewhere in that time, they became best friends.

"Why did you fight?" the principal asked eventually, glaring at them over his fancy city-boy glasses.

Rick and Shane exchanged a glance.

"Didn't fight," Rick said.

"No sir," added Shane.

The principal frowned. "Well then what happened?"

"Ran into a door," Rick said, grinning winningly.

"I fell," Shane said, and that was that.

* * *

><p>The ride back to Hershel's is quiet. Once upon a time, it wouldn'tve been, but those days are dead and buried.<p>

Shane's face fucking hurts. Rick's got a swing on him when he's pissed, Shane'll give him that.

He wonders for a second what Lori will say when they come home with bloody knuckles and blackened teeth. Then he wants to punch himself, 'cause she ain't gonna say a thing about him at all. She'll be all over Rick, and then when they're alone she'll whisper things about Shane, make him out to be a mad dog needing shot.

_I ain't no mad dog, _Shane thinks, watching that walker shamble on in the cornfield. _And I sure as hell don't need to "come back" or whatever the hell Rick's thinking. _

His face hurts. His hands, too, and his shoulder, but mostly his face.

He snorts quietly. Come back.

Yeah fucking right.

* * *

><p>It's almost worst the busted face to see the realization enter Lori's eyes. She sees them get stiffly out of the car, blood-crusted with hackles up, two dogs circling over a dead animal, and presses a hand to her mouth.<p>

_Serves her right, _Shane thinks viciously. He doesn't meet her eyes. Rick was clear about that, yes he was. Lori is Off Limits.

"What happened?" she asks.

"Nothin'," Rick says. He meets Shane's eyes. He meets them and holds them, and for a hot second, Shane thinks he's eleven again and Ricky Grimes has just broken his nose.

"Rick," says Lori, an edge entering her voice and staying there, and damn if that doesn't go right to Shane's—

_No. _He shuts it down. Lori isn't his. He doesn't love Lori.

"Nothing happened," Rick says. "We ran into some walkers is all. We're fine."

"And that's _all _that happened?" The rest of the group is gathering around now, curious. They look at Rick with worry and at Shane with fear.

_Good, _he thinks.

Lori looks straight at Shane when she says it, her eyes flicking to his beat-up hands and the bruises forming around his eyes. "What happened to your faces?"

"Ran into a door," Rick says, without missing a beat.

Shane grins. "I fell."

* * *

><p>They raised themselves, Rick and Shane. Rick's mama was sick so his parents weren't home a lot, and Shane's dad was Shane's dad—if he wasn't drunk he was hunting and he didn't have time for no snot-nosed kids.<p>

Those snot-nosed kids did just fine without him. For six years they had the run of the town (and, more often than not, the police station, where they spent a good bit of time for various misunderstandings with the kind officers of the law) and life was good.

Sure, Rick showed up at Shane's window sometimes with fractured blue eyes and a new bruise on his cheek, and sure Shane sometimes had to stay home and nurse some sprains and once a cracked rib, but they were alright.

"The hell happened to you?" Shane asked one night, stretched out on his roof. It was hot as fuck and Rick was cradling his hand, which looked spectacularly broken.

"Ran into a door," Rick said through gritted teeth.

Shane raised his eyebrows. "You sure run into a lotta those."

"No more'n you fall down," Rick shot back, and Shane grinned widely.

"Sure," he said, leaning back. "Sure."

* * *

><p>Shane doesn't sleep, and sometime near dawn, he hears quiet footsteps, a tent unzipping, and then, farther away, the rhythm of a shovel cutting into dirt.<p>

He gets up.

_Ain't like I'm gonna sleep anyway, _he thinks, and wanders out to the barn.

Sure enough there's Rick, digging away like a machine, straining under the weight of it.

"What're you doin', man," Shane says. He comes in sideways 'cause he doesn't trust Rick not to hit him over the head with the shovel. (He did throw that wrench, after all).

Rick doesn't answer. It's still too dark to see his eyes, but Shane _knows. _He's always known what Rick's thinking, really. This time, he's actually kind of impressed.

"Rick, man—"

"Shut up," Rick snarls. He doesn't stop digging. "I won't just burn him like he's a walker, like he's _garbage_. I'll do this for them, for you, to keep them safe, but I won't—"

Wordlessly, Shane grabs a shovel and helps Rick dig Randall's grave.

* * *

><p>When they were seventeen, Rick's mama died.<p>

The funeral was the first time Shane wore a tux, and he liked the way it fit him, made all the girls bat their pretty eyes at him.

_I could get used to this, _he thought, grinning widely. Then he realized that yeah no, he shouldn't be smiling at his best friend's mama's funeral, and he sobered up real quick.

The service was short and simple. Rick's dad didn't say anything. Rick said everything. They buried her under an old oak tree, next to her mama and baby brother.

Rick didn't talk about the shadowy bruise behind his ear, or the ones on his knuckles, just like Rick's dad didn't talk about the stiffness in his arms or the way he cradled his ribs.

"You okay?" Shane asked, keeping an eye on Rick's old man. The guy looked empty. Like he had nothing left. _Good, _he thought. _Good, you selfish old bastard. _

"Yeah," said Rick through gritted teeth. "Just walked into a door."

* * *

><p>The week following Randall's execution is quiet. Everyone's walking on eggshells around Rick and Shane, because they woke up and found Randall dangling from the rafters, executed old-world style.<p>

Shane's pretty sure they blame him for it. From what he can get out of Andrea, the general theory is that he slipped before anyone else was awake and administered his own special form of justice, and that Rick, being the good, mild-mannered guy he is, is covering for him so Hershel doesn't toss him out.

Shane gets a kick out of that one, because he actually had very little to do with Randall's death.

Rick made the noose. Rick made the choice.

Shane just watched, and later, helped bury the body.

* * *

><p>Nobody seems to notice, but Rick and Shane are actually okay, after a while. They're off, yeah. The good ol' days, well, those are long dead and they ain't coming back. Too much has happened, Shane thinks. Too much has been said.<p>

Not that he regrets it, because he doesn't. He doesn't regret a single thing he's done since the world went to shit, not a single thing.

Everything he's done has kept him and Lori and Carl alive. He doesn't regret it. He can't afford to regret it.

"Wanna go out with me?" Rick asks one day, out of the blue. His face and hands are healed up now, only scarred a little bit from their run-in at the schoolyard.

Shane grins, because that sounds stupid and Rick knows it, and Rick can't help but grin a bit back. "Hell, man," Shane says. "Thought you'd never ask."

Lori doesn't like it when they go out. Hell, she doesn't even like it when they're in the same room together. She seems to think that he's gonna jump on Rick and shred him, like wildcats do to little rabbits.

But Shane isn't a wildcat (if he's any animal, he's a motherfucking tiger, okay) and Rick isn't a rabbit, unless he's the one from _Monty Python _in which case no, still not a rabbit.

They're okay. They're making this…thing, where Rick says something and Shane listens, mostly, work.

And if Shane's fingers still twitch for a gun every time he sees Rick out of the corner of his eye, well. Old habits die hard, and he hasn't acted on those twitches, not yet. He's starting to think he never will, and he wonders if, in this walker-infested world, if that's a good thing or not.

* * *

><p>By the time they were eighteen, Rick's dad was dead too and Shane was spending all his time at the old Grimes house, anything and everything to get away from his own dad.<p>

One night, he showed up at two in the morning with a concussion, a black eye, one cracked rib, and a hand so badly broken he thought he'd never hold a football again.

Rick, predictably, flipped a shit. Tried to call 9-1-1, even, which they said they'd never do, no matter how bad it got. Family shit was family shit, no one else's.

"Don't need a fucking ambulance," Shane said through gritted teeth, once Rick had determined that yes, he was going to live. "Need your fucking help."

Rick, to his credit, didn't ask what for. When Shane told him to grab his shovel, he did so without even batting an eye.

They buried Shane's dad in the woods, deep off where nobody would find him. Rick broke his hand punching the side of Shane's truck. Shane stood over his father's grave and laughed and laughed like a madman, and even years later he could look back to that point and say _yes, there, that's where I started to break away. _

It was the summer of broken hands, and they swore that they'd get out of that town. They'd just up and leave and make something of themselves, and never ever go back.

The sheriff came around a few days later, looking for Shane's dad. He saw the bruises and his eyes softened, 'cause even though Shane had been in his station more times than either of them could count, he still sort of liked the kid.

"What happened, son?" he asked gently, more gently than Shane had ever heard the bad-tempered old man.

Shane just grinned. "I fell," he said, and that was that.

* * *

><p>Things fall into a sort of rhythm, as summer drags on. Rick and Shane go on runs together, where they laugh and poke fun at each other and occasionally get to release some frustration in the form of stabbing a walker in the face.<p>

(Shane has perfected a technique that scoops out the eye like it's Jell-O. The first time he did it, Rick threw up. The second time, he laughed. Now, he's almost as good at it as Shane is.)

At the farm, they don't talk, unless it's Rick giving an order or Shane giving his opinion. They don't talk about Lori, or the baby. Those are still Off Limits.

Carl, bless the boy, he has his father's good heart and his mother's sheer stubbornness, is not Off Limits, because he was and he did not like that _at all _and proceeded to blatantly ignore his parents and spend time with Shane anyway.

At first, Shane let the kid because he was still _fucking angry _at Rick and Lori for taking away his family—and they _were _his too, just as much as they were Rick's—and then he let Carl follow him around because he still loved that kid.

Carl wears his daddy's hat, but he tucks his pants into his boots like Shane, and, well, Shane can't ask for more than that.

One day, as the sun's setting and Shane's taking Carl around the farm, Carl reaches up and touches the fading scar on the side of Shane's face.

"What happened?"

Shane smiles. "Weren't nothin'," he says. "I fell."

Carl is probably the only person who believes him.

* * *

><p>That day at the hospital, Shane almost didn't make it out. The military was everywhere, the walkers roaming in herds, and Rick was <em>dead, <em>oh god he was _dead_.

Shane almost died because he wasn't watching where he was going.

He was going down the stairs, but it was dark as fuck and he was blind anyway, leaving his best friend behind, and he just… fell.

Damn near broke his wrist, falling down those stairs, and because Shane has the best luck in the world he fell into a waiting walker.

It almost got him—he heard its teeth click next to its ear, but Shane got himself loose and emptied a clip into the thing, and he made it out.

He ran all the way to Rick's house and pulled Lori and Carl to him, and Lori, with tears in her eyes, said "what happened?"

"Rick's gone," he said hoarsely. "And I fell." And that time, he was telling the truth.

* * *

><p>A month after Randall's death and the Wrench Incident, as Shane and Rick have come to call it, when they're on their supply runs, Andrea asks him out.<p>

He just sort of stares at her, because he's pretty sure that the world's ended and there's actually nowhere left to go out to.

Rick, damn him, is quietly cracking up and Andrea has her hands on her hips in a way that shouldn't turn him on as much as it does.

"Well?" she says. "What're you looking like that at me for, huh? What happened to Mr. Confidence?"

"He fell," Rick says, between giggles—_giggles, _seriously, who the fuck giggles like a schoolgirl, they're grown men, Jesus. "Knocked some screws loose, I think."

Andrea huffs and grabs ahold of his hand, dragging him off to the barn.

_I will shoot you, _Shane mouths at Rick, and a month ago, it would have been a threat. Now, though, Rick howls with laughter, sagging against a tree to keep himself up.

Shane hopes he gets splinters.

* * *

><p>"I want you to come with me," Shane says at dinner, clearing his throat.<p>

Everyone stares at him like he's crazy, except Rick who knows he's crazy. He finishes off his chicken, wipes his mouth, and says "okay."

"Are you _serious?_" Lori hisses. Shane tries not to glare. He really does. "It'll be dark soon and you want to just go with him to God knows where—"

"It'll be fine," Rick says, pushing back from his chair. He smiles up at Shane.

"Rick," says Dale, and this time Shane does glare because _fuck you, _old man, _fuck. You. _

"C'mon," Shane mutters, and leads Rick out.

They hop into the Versa and drive out down the winding road, back towards where the Wrench Incident happened.

"What're we doing?" Rick asks lightly. Shane cuts him a look. He certainly doesn't seem nervous, like he's expecting Shane to hit him over the head with a wrench.

This, Shane guesses, is a good sign or whatever.

"Lookin' for something," Shane says, peering into the growing dark. It's been a long time, probably too long, it's probably long dead or gone by now, but—

And there it is, walking that same field. He stops the car.

The walker is a pitiful thing, even by walker standards. The last month hasn't been good to it.

Rick looks at the walker shuffling towards them now, growling eagerly, dragging one stiff leg. He looks at Shane. He looks at the walker again, and he smiles.

"Here," he says, pressing his revolver into Shane's hand. "I got your back."

Shane takes the gun and steps forward, meeting the walker in the middle. He raises the gun. He shouldn't do this. The walker's far out from the farm. It's not a threat to anyone, really, stuck here in this field.

But Rick said "it's time for you to come back." It's time, he said, it's time.

Shane, for the first time since he was eighteen years old, thinks yeah, it's probably time.

He raises the gun.

* * *

><p>It is cold as fuck. Shane would just like to point that out right now, because in the before-days there was this misconception that it was never cold in Georgia ever, but <em>holy shit <em>he's going to freeze walking from the car to Hershel's house.

"You're going to miss it!" Andrea bawls from the porch. She's got a set of lungs on her, does that girl, and Shane breaks into a jog.

He will never hear the end of it, if he misses it.

Inside the group is all clustered in the kitchen minus the Grimes family, and Glenn wordlessly points.

Shane trips and crashes into a door on the way there, he's in that much of a hurry, but it's whatever, what's one more concussion to the mix?

He almost misses it.

Lori's baby is born just as the sun slides down over the fields with Hershel on one side, Rick on the other, and Shane standing in the doorway.

For a second, it's perfectly quiet, and then the baby cries.

"It's a girl," Hershel says, once Rick's stopped bawling like an idiot and is cradling the baby in his arms. Lori looks tired and pleased and relieved all at once, and this time, when she meets Shane's eyes, she keeps smiling.

"Rick," she says, and nods.

"Wanna hold her?" Rick asks. He pushes the baby into Shane's arms before he can say otherwise. "We were thinking—well I was thinking and Lori was breaking my hand—" Lori hits him, affectionately, mostly—"that you should be her godfather. You know, in case anything happens to us, to Lori and me."

Shane can't breathe all that well, looking down at this baby—Lori's and Rick's and _his _baby too, now, she's part him and he's never letting her go, not ever—in his arms. "What's her name?" he murmurs.

"Haven't decided yet," says Lori. "What do you think?"

"Judith," he says immediately, meeting Rick's eyes. "After your mama."

"Judith." Rick and Lori test it out, roll it on their tongues.

"I like it," says Lori, and that's that.

"What happened to your face?" Rick asks, taking his daughter back, nodding at the new bruise. Shane prods his forehead.

"Oh, that," he says dismissively. "I fell. It's nothing."

Rick grins widely, clapping him on the shoulder. Lori says something very unladylike about idiot men and if you drop my baby I will feed you to a fucking walker, _Richard, _don't you think I won't, and the baby starts to cry as they laugh.

"Welcome back," Rick murmurs, and for a second they're elven again, sitting in the principal's office, pressing ice packs to their faces.

Shane grins. "It was time," he says, and that's that.


End file.
